Melvin Ladousier: Carbon money? Spend it on commuter trains

Re: “Big carbon bucks still not spent”: It should be a no-brainer – spend all of it on commuter rail. Extend BART south in the Highway 101 corridor, east and south to Patterson, east and north to Stockton in the 580 and I-5 corridors. Extend and improve the LA commuter rail in a spider web pattern along all major commuter routes into and around the city. If our governor wants to leave a “railroad” legacy, let it be one that takes the greatest number of automobiles off of the rolling parking lots.

Even diesel-powered commuter trains will have a much smaller carbon footprint than the automobiles it displaces. Given the development of diesel exhaust scrubber equipment the carbon footprint will be far smaller than the electrical power generation plants used to produce power for the electric train. Get the most bang for our bucks, stop the high speed rail and put the money into true commuter rail systems serving our major metropolitan complexes.

This story was originally published October 19, 2015 at 1:39 PM with the headline "Melvin Ladousier: Carbon money? Spend it on commuter trains."